Tolerance cannot be measured in terms of degrees of intolerance. I am essentially opposed to burning books even when they incite others to violence. But freedom is either an absolute or it is conditioned on not inciting others to violence. Anything else is rationalized bigotry.

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Saturday, July 5, 2014

The Murder of Innocents and Evil Fruit

On June 12 three Israeli
teenagers hitch-hiking in Judea and Samaria
were kidnapped by terrorists. One of the lads placed an emergency call through
to the police. It was probably the last thing any of them did before they were
murdered.The bodies of Eyal Yifrach,
Gilad Sha’ar and Naftali Fraenkel were found in a shallow grave covered by
rocks 18 days later.

It could be that their killers meant
to murder them immediately or they may have been potential kidnap victims,
intended for an Operation Gilad Shalit mark II.Right now I feel sorry both for Gilad Shalit and for the parents of
those people who have died and will die because of this senseless, inhuman
betrayal.

One thing is for sure however and
that is that Israel
will be taken onto a new path as a result of this latest crime against the
youth of the State.The police have been
discredited and even though the result would not have differed if they had
immediately taken action their job will now be made much more difficult to
carry out and the danger to them in investigating future alleged disappearances
greater than ever.

Nor has the Western Press
disappointed. Adjectives such us retribution, retaliation and revenge are what
are usually applied to Israeli actions. The world has become too accustomed to
Jewish subservience in the face of persecution and we are too few in number to
be more than marginally, politically relevant. We have turned the other cheek for
most of the last couple of millennia and are now demonized because the Jew
dares to fight back.Of course a
measured, ‘proportionate’ response is what is now needed. But ‘proportionality’
is always the adjective of failure used by Israel’s critics to describe any armed
reaction to disproportionate Arab or Muslim actions.And here is the problem.

We act as if history is not a
teacher by whom we should all be guided.We have lost the propaganda war. The world is bored already by nearly 200,000
deaths in Syria
over three years of civil war.But the
violence that plagues Iraq
and elsewhere throughout a world populated by Muslim extremists is not unusual
nor is it new.

That conquering zeal has often
been gory because intermittently there have arisen Muslim theological
psychopaths, and they demanded renewal.Their reinterpretation of Islam was inevitably characterized by a
“return” to strict observance of the Koran and the Hadith (the alleged sayings
of the Prophet) which then encouraged the sick mind, for whom there exists no
concept of proportionality.They
therefore have never had a need to show restraint in their commission of one atrocity
after another.Until that is, they were
stopped.No one is stopping them
now.The world does not care what
happens in Syria nor does it
care about Sudan, Somalia, Egypt
or Nigeria;
but it never forgets to lecture us on how to behave or to demand that we tread
carefully for their sake (and not ours). And I can understand this too.

The Western world defines a
refugee as anyone who can make it to our Western shores without a passport, or
it may as well define them as such because few asylum seekers are returned to
their home country.And it is
profitable.Western demographics are in
crisis.Citizens of the developed world
no longer reproduce at a rate that covers their level of mortality so we need
cheap imported labor to maintain the efficient running of the state.The upward mobility of immigrants means that
the demographic crisis is ongoing and exacerbated by a clash of civilizations
within nations.And immigrants become
voters who must be feared for their voting power.So if Israel is blamed for unrest within
the Western World’s mushrooming Muslim population it follows that the State of
Israel will also be instructed on how it should behave when confronted with
treason and insurrection inside of its own borders.

The differing reactions both in Israel and
elsewhere were also, to be expected.Israel
is a tiny country and any tragedy affects everyone. The entire country may not
have been in a state of shock, concern, mourning and despair but collectively, most
of us were in such a state. A time of crisis is the time that normal nations
experience national unity and such was the feeling of solidarity that wrapped
its comforting arms around Israel.
There were calls to topple the Palestinian authority. Especially when
Palestinian men, women and children were photographed handing out sweets to
celebrate the kidnapping. And lots of selfies were taken showing a three
fingered version of the Quenelle. Palestinian editorial cartoons were wholly
supportive of the kidnapping.It took
four days for the European Union to condemn the kidnapping and reports surfaced
of a conspiracy by the boys themselves to hide and provoke trouble.Prominent British antisemites, some of them
mainstream politicians and clergymen, pronounced the kidnapping to be a Zionist
conspiracy.

In Israel, a fringe of mindless
and hateful people did respond with calls to violence but most Jewish Israelis
would be not simply appalled by such behaviour but also, openly disgusted. Israel must cut out this plague of
incitement from our side. The State is what defines us and the rule of law is
what sanctifies us or damns us all.Anything else is the road to compartmentalization (tribalism) and civil war.

Following the discovery of
another kidnapping-murder, this time of Arab youth Muhammad Abu Khdeir, the
bereaved family of Eyal Fraenkel issued a statement: "There is no
difference between blood and blood. Murder is murder, whatever the nationality
and age. There is no justification, no
forgiveness and no atonement for any kind of murder."

The contrast between us and the
Arab World could not be greater.

In the extended version of the call the Israeli
teens made to the police, gunshots are heard followed by the murderers joyful
boasting and singing in celebration at their success at “bagging three”.While the international press prominently
displayed the denials of guilt expressed by HAMAS they conveniently ignored any
mention that HAMAS has, since the release of Gilad Shalit on 18th October 2011,
constantly incited its supporters to carry out further abductions.HAMAS cheered the kidnapping.The depravity displayed in this celebration
of bestiality, celebrating the ‘others’ pain, was a reminder to all in Israel that its
war is an existential one against the forces of darkness. The Koran explicitly
cheers the killing of Jews and the doctrine of abrogation is used by its
apologists in the West to explain the inexcusable.If we choose to complain, the good Muslim may
take any passage in the Koran and point to one that contradicts it.And the Islamic Fundamentalist can do nothing
wrong.Palestinian society is morally
bankrupt.There are few Arabs with the
courage to stand up to the theological psychopath or secular exploiter of this
religion of conquest and hate. The recent example of Palestinian Professor Mohammed Dajani (Al Quds University) who faced abuse, intimidation and death threats after he took 27 students to Auschwitz (and was forced to resign because of it)
underlines the distance separating us from the bigoted Islamic nation.

Senior Palestinian Authority
official Abbas Zaki on March 14, 2014 said:“Allah is gathering the Jews (to Israel) so we can kill them.”Incitement is always rewarded.

The mother of one of the two HAMAS
operatives Israel
has named as suspects in the murder of the Israeli boys stated that “my boys
are all righteous, pious and pure.The
goal of my children is the triumph of Islam.”She further stated that if as adults any of her seven children wanted to
die for Islam she would be proud and overjoyed.Here is another part of the problem.If your definition of “righteous, pious and pure” is to murder babies,
children or even adults then by definition the religion that preaches this
theology of death is not a religion of peace but a religion of violence and
immorality.

Former
Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael B. Oren said: "One of the sources of Israel’s moral strength has been
our refusal to resemble our enemies in their obsession with revenge and blood.
I categorically condemn all acts of violence and racism which dishonor the
memory of our three precious boys”.

“Beware of false prophets, which come to you
in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them
by their fruits.” (Matthew 7:15-16)

It seems to me that between the
quotes of Palestinian mothers, HAMAS officials and senior members of the
Palestinian authority, the extract above from the Christian Bible is all we
need to know about the Arab world and its addiction to a religion that cleaves
to principles defined by exclusion, apartheid and death.

3 comments:

I fully agree with your following statement: "In Israel, a fringe of mindless and hateful people did respond with calls to violence but most Jewish Israelis would be not simply appalled by such behaviour but also, openly disgusted. Israel must cut out this plague of incitement from our side. The State is what defines us and the rule of law is what sanctifies us or damns us all. "

But... and there is a big but here, over the last 30 years, thousands of murdering terrorists have been released by several weak minded Israeli governments. Most of these released terrorists have returned right back and continued to murder thousands of innocent Israeli men women and children, including babies.

How would you feel if one of your family members or your whole family was decimated by these terrorists? Would you still trust your government to do the right thing for the country and its citizens? Do you still think that they are mindless and hateful? Would you not be hateful if your mom or dad or your brothers or all of them were murdered just for being Jews?

The problem is that previous Israeli terrorists had political targets - the mayors in Judea and Samaria, it could even be somehow argued in some convoluted - twisted fashion that Barukh Goldstein was making a political statement. But to take an innocent and murder them (particularly in the way that this was done) - implies some terrible affliction -a sociopathic personality disorder. We expect this of fundamentalists of any kind - because they have the kind of personality that accepts everything. I called them in the posting above, theological psychopaths. If Israeli society continues to ignore lawlessness (and in this day and age that includes unrestrained prejudice) then the murders are a logical outcome. We as Jews are defined by our opposition to the thug and the bestial killer - Islam will and too often does, justify atrocity. See the recent ISIS crimes against humanity. I understand hate, I cannot, as a Jew, condone it, ever.

There's a basic problem here.... in "their' eyes, the only innocents are them! all others and especially "settlers" are by no means innocent! Most of these senseless murders, of families, including women, children, babies, are of those who live within what is commonly known as the occupied territories. Now all of this is up for endless debate, but as long as the Palestinians see the Jews as living on their land, there will always be danger of murder and terrorism. The fact that in this era, there are also extremists on our side does not justify the avenged killing of another teenager, or the gruesome beating up of another who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. We still have to uphold our integrity and not go down to their barbaric level of expressing joy at the death of a Palestinian youth (Eliraz Fein, a female resident of the Hilltop youth settlement of Yizhar). We pride ourselves in being a civil democracy in the middle of an autocratic and barbaric region, and it's so hard when as you say, no body cares about the thousands of dead Syrians or the Israeli field hospitals that are set up on the border especially to help the Syrian wounded, nor the Israeli hospitals that take care of the palestinian sick and even the wife of the Rais ( virtually at the very moment our 3 boys are being murdered). Yes, we're living cruel and hard times. But we need to keep our cool, keep our dignity and not lash out. There's got to be another way!